ROONEY, Andrew A(itken) 1919-

PERSONAL: Born January 14, 1919, in Albany, NY; son of Walter Scott and Ellinor (Reynolds) Rooney; married Marguerite Howard (a teacher), March 21, 1942; children: Ellen, Martha, Emily, Brian. Education: Attended Albany Academy and Colgate University, 1942. Politics: "Vacillating."

ADDRESSES: Office—CBS News, 524 West 57th St., New York, NY 10019. Agent—Public Affairs Publications, 250 West 57th St., Suite 1321, New York, NY 10107.

CAREER: Writer, primarily for television. Worked for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Hollywood, CA, one year; freelance magazine writer, 1947-49; wrote material for Arthur Godfrey, 1949-55, Sam Levenson, Herb Shriner, Victor Borge, and for "Twentieth Century," and "Seven Lively Arts"; Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) Inc., New York, NY, writer for CBS Radio's "The Garry Moore Show," 1959-65, writer and producer of television essays, documentaries, and specials for CBS News, 1962-70; worked for public television, 1970-71, and for American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. (ABC-TV), 1971-72; CBS News, writer, producer, and narrator of television essays, documentaries, and specials, 1972—, regular commentator on CBS News program 60 Minutes, 1978—. Military service: U.S. Army, 1942-45, reporter for Stars and Stripes; became sergeant; received Air Medal and Bronze Star.

AWARDS, HONORS: Writers Guild of America Award for best television documentary, 1966, for "The Great Love Affair," 1968, for "Black History: Lost, Stolen, or Strayed," 1971, for "An Essay on War," 1975, for "Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington," 1976, for "Mr. Rooney Goes to Dinner," and 1979, for "Happiness: The Elusive Pursuit"; George Foster Peabody Award, University of Georgia, 1975, for "Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington"; Emmy Award, 1978, for "Who Owns What in America," and 1981 and 1982, for "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney" on 60 Minutes.

WRITINGS:

(With Oram C. Hutton) Air Gunner, Farrar & Rinehart (New York, NY), 1944.

(With Oram C. Hutton) The Story of the "Stars and Stripes," Farrar & Rinehart (New York, NY), 1946.

(With Oram C. Hutton) Conquerors' Peace: A Report to the American Stockholders, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1947.

(Editor and author of notes and comment, with Dickson Hartwell) Off the Record: The Best Stories of Foreign Correspondents, collected by Overseas Press Club of America, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1952.

The Fortunes of War: Four Great Battles of World War II, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1962.

A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney (includes "In Praise of New York City," "Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington," "Mr. Rooney Goes to Dinner," "Mr. Rooney Goes to Work," and "An Essay on War"), Atheneum (New York, NY), 1981.

And More by Andy Rooney (essays), Atheneum (New York, NY), 1982.

Pieces of My Mind, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1984.

The Most of Andy Rooney, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1986.

Word for Word, Putnam (New York, NY), 1986.

Not That You Asked . . . , Random House (New York, NY), 1989.

Sweet and Sour, Putnam (New York, NY), 1992.

My War, Times Books (New York, NY), 1995.

Sincerely, Andy Rooney, Public Affairs (New York, NY), 1999.

Common Nonsense, Public Affairs (New York, NY), 2002.

Years of Minutes, Public Affairs (New York, NY), 2003.

Author of television essays, documentaries, and specials for CBS-TV, including "An Essay on Doors"; "An Essay on Bridges"; (with Richard Ellison) "The Great Love Affair," broadcast 1966; "Hotels," broadcast June 28, 1966; "An Essay on Women," broadcast 1967; (with Perry Wolff) "Black History: Lost, Stolen, or Strayed," broadcast 1968; "In Praise of New York City," broadcast February 1, 1974; "Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington," broadcast January 26, 1975; "Mr. Rooney Goes to Dinner," broadcast April 20, 1976; "Mr. Rooney Goes to Work," broadcast July 5, 1977. Author of documentary "An Essay on War," broadcast by WNET-TV, 1971, as part of "The Great American Dream Machine" series. Coauthor of filmscript based on The Story of the "Stars and Stripes," purchased by MGM. Writer, under name Andy Rooney, of column syndicated to over 250 newspapers by Tribune Co. Syndicate, 1979—. Contributor to periodicals.

SIDELIGHTS: Andrew A. Rooney, known to his many fans as "Andy," is "the homespun Homer whose celebrations of the commonplace and jeremiads against the degenerating twentieth century are cheered by forty million viewers of one of the nation's top-rated TV shows," wrote Elizabeth Peer in Newsweek. A longtime writer and producer for the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), Rooney became a regular essayist on the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes in 1978 and has evolved into "a one-man institution," noted Anne Chamberlin in the Washington Post Book World. His observations on such everyday items as chairs, doors, jeans, and soap have not only appeared on television but also in a twice-weekly column syndicated to over 200 newspapers across the country. Moreover, many of these essays have been compiled into best-selling books. The multimedia success of these wry, down-to-earth editorials, stated Bruce Henstell in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, has made Rooney "the most listened-to curmudgeon in recent times."

Admitting in the Detroit News that it "makes me mad when people come up to me and don't know I lived before 1979," Rooney has been a writer all his working life. Rooney told CA: "I started dreaming of being a writer when I was about twelve. In college I did all the usual things and was editor of a literary-humor magazine." Rooney became a reporter for the armed forces' Stars and Stripes after being drafted into the army in 1941. "The army, in its ignorance, thought I knew something about being a newspaperman," Rooney told CA. "I didn't but I found out in three years with the army paper." He and colleague Oram C. "Bud" Hutton coauthored two books while serving their country during World War II and one after being discharged. Air Gunner, described by the late Edmund Wilson in the New Yorker as "an excellent piece of reporting," tells about the American boys who manned the guns on the flying fortresses over Europe, and The Story of the "Stars and Stripes," published in 1946, discusses the development of the GI newspaper and its staff over the course of World War II. Conquerors' Peace reports the findings of a post-war tour of Europe by Rooney and Hutton, who not only examined the landscape, the American cemeteries, and the displaced persons problem, but also probed into the inhabitants' feelings about the war and the occupation troops.

Rooney's memories of World War II would also serve as the subject of a later book, the memoir My War, published in 1995. Recalling the war in Europe from the vantage of a wet-behind-the-ears reporter, Rooney recounts witnessing daylight bombing raids over Germany, troops landing on the beaches of Normandy, and the horrific remains of Nazi concentration camps discovered shortly before the war's end in 1945. While critics praised Rooney's readable narrative, some took exception to his efforts to construe the motives and strategies of military leaders such as generals Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton. As Louis D. Rubin, Jr. commented in the Washington Post Book World, "Rooney's talents as an interpreter, as distinguished from a chronicler, of warfare are definitely on the flimsy side." However, John McDonough praised My War in his review for Chicago's Tribune Books, noting that "Rooney writes about the war he saw with wit, wisdom and a down-to earth lack of sentimentality." The journalist recalls the opinions and emotions of his younger years candidly; although he had mixed feelings about serving in a foreign war—and had contemplated evading the draft as a conscientious objector—his skepticism about the reasons why Americans were fighting and dying overseas ended upon viewing the newly discovered Buchenwald concentration camp in April of 1945. As he wrote in My War: "I . . . stared in embarrassed silence, thinking about the doubts I'd had in college. I was ashamed of myself for ever having considered refusing to serve in the army. For the first time I knew for certain that any peace is not better than any war."

After being discharged from the army in August, 1945, Rooney went to Hollywood and cowrote the filmscript of The Story of the "Stars and Stripes" for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. After finishing the script as well as other assignments with Hutton, he became a freelance writer, publishing pieces in Reader's Digest, Look, Life, Esquire, and other magazines. But after spending six weeks on an article for Harper's and getting $350 for it, "I realized I was not going to make it as a magazine writer," Rooney told a Time reporter. From 1949 to 1955 Rooney was Arthur Godfrey's radio and television writer, "at a more comfortable $625 a week," according to the writer for Time, and he later crafted clever lines for such personalities as Victor Borge, Sam Levenson, and Herb Shriner.

Rooney began his long affiliation with CBS in 1959, when the network hired him to write for "The Garry Moore Show." "In 1949," Rooney told CA, "the freelance magazine-writing business started to seem like the wrong way to make a decent living. I looked for work at CBS News, did a few reports for them on a freelance basis, and ran into Arthur Godfrey on the elevator one day. I went to work for him the following Monday and it was a good thing because by then I needed the money again." Three years later, he teamed up with veteran newsman Harry Reasoner for the first in a series of television essays that focused mainly on such seemingly mundane subjects as bridges, doors, and hotels. During their six-year collaboration from 1962 to 1968, Rooney wrote the words and served as producer of the broadcasts, and Reasoner presented the reports on camera. Susan Slobojan of the Detroit News noted that in these specials, "observing life with both eyes open and tongue planted firmly in cheek became a sort of Rooney trademark." She cited the beginning of "An Essay on Women," produced in 1967, as indicative of his approach in which Rooney offers this disclaimer: "This broadcast was prepared by men, and makes no claim to be fair. Prejudice has saved us a great deal of time in preparation."

But Rooney did not take everything so lightly. In 1970, when CBS wanted to shorten his philosophical half-hour "An Essay on War," Rooney quit the network in protest and transferred to public television at lower pay. He then bought the essay from CBS to air on "The Great American Dream Machine" series, broadcast by New York's WNET-TV. Unable to use Reasoner's voice for his work, Rooney had to read it himself. "It was the only practical thing to do," he explained to New York's Lewis Grossberger. "We didn't have a star on the 'Dream Machine.' Everybody did their own pieces. So I read it. It wasn't very well read, but the piece was good." Indeed, "An Essay on War" was good enough to win Rooney one of his six Writers Guild of America Awards; perhaps a more important consequence, however, was that it launched him on a career as an on-camera commentator.

Lured back to CBS in 1972, Rooney wrote, produced, and narrated a series of television reports on American life that, like many of his previous essays, "were characterized by the same droll, stubborn sensibility," observed Slobojan. The finest of these reports, according to a Time writer, "was probably 'In Praise of New York City,' a journalistic paean that anticipated parts of Woody Allen's 'Manhattan.'" In "Mr. Rooney Goes to Dinner," he examined numerous facets of eating out, noting among other things that a tassel on the menu "can add a couple of dollars per person" to the average bill.

"After traveling across the country and visiting more than a hundred factories and other places of business and after seeing a lot of people leaning on their shovels when they should have been shoveling and then hearing people testify that they don't work hard," he concluded in "Mr. Rooney Goes to Work," "I have still become convinced, to my great surprise, that Americans are working their tails off." And in the best-known of these reports, "Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington," he wittily surmised that the federal bureaucracy is not "being run by evil people; it's being run by people like you and me. And you know how we have to be watched."

Rooney's reports won several awards and garnered much public attention, but his role at CBS was still somewhat ill-defined. "They have never known exactly what to do with me around here," he told Lewis Grossberger. Rooney felt there was a place for a short essay somewhere around the company, so he requested more air time. The network gave him a chance in 1978 as a summer replacement for the "Point Counterpoint" segment of the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes. The move was so successful that "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney" became a regular feature of the show that fall, alternating with the mini-debates of Shana Alexander and Jack Kilpatrick. One year later, Shana and Jack were gone for good, the frequency of Rooney's appearances increased, and Rooney's popularity soared. "Audiences began wondering where he'd been all these years," wrote Slobojan.

Since joining 60 Minutes, Rooney has become a no-table media figure. In addition to prompting comparisons with humorists E. B. White, James Thurber, and Art Buchwald, his deadpan delivery and acerbic wit have made him as popular as Mike Wallace and the rest of the 60 Minutes crew. In addition, he has earned a total of four Emmy Awards in his capacity as commentator. Typically, Rooney dismisses their significance. "Awards are spinach," he told CA. "I like to get them but they don't mean anything. Everyone who has worked for very long in broadcasting wins a lot of them whether they're any good or not."

Paradoxically, Rooney's overwhelming success "derives largely from his persona as an ordinary guy," explained Michael Dirda in the Washington Post Book World. Described by a Time writer as "the Boswell of Stuff" and by CBS colleague Walter Cronkite as "Everyman, articulating all the frustrations with modern life that the rest of us Everymen . . . suffer with silence or mumbled oaths," Rooney told Slobojan he deliberately writes about "subjects of universal interest." "Rooney appreciates such things," noted Lewis Grossberger, "[because] he believes that the mundane is more important than commonly thought. The pencil, for instance, ultimately has a greater effect on our existence, he figures, than, say, the Vietnam war." Carolyn See maintained that Rooney's attention to the commonplace "puts the rest of those '60 Minutes' in perspective: Crooked union bosses may be one thing, but making good vanilla ice cream, or getting strung out on what shampoo to buy—these are the issues that should, and do, preoccupy America."

Rooney has tried not to let fame alter his normal habits. Asked about his attitude toward the giving of autographs, Rooney told CA: "I don't give autographs and it makes me feel foolish to be asked. Who'd want my name on a piece of paper? I just tell people 'I don't do that.' They seem to accept it. No one, by the way, ever says they want the autograph for themselves. It's for their wife or their son or their elderly mother."

Though Rooney does not think of himself as a humorist, his wry wit must ultimately be considered part of his appeal. "Rooney's humor is dry," noted Grossberger. "He doesn't do many jokes as such. Instead of 'Ha!' he goes for the 'Huh!'—that grunt of recognition and pleasure evoked when you hit somebody with a homely truth." The preface to A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney typifies the Rooney wit. Having expressed an uneasiness over the fact that a book by anyone on a popular television broadcast "will probably sell whether it's any good or not," he deftly admitted: "It wasn't hard to talk me into putting this book together. It is unsatisfactory for a writer to have his words said once and then disappear forever into the air. Seeing our names in print leads to the dream all of us have of immortality. You can't ask more from something than immortality and money next week."

Pieces of My Mind picked up where And More by Andy Rooney left off, culling the best of Rooney's essays from his syndicated newspaper columns. A proven formula, the book was warmly embraced by the public and genially reviewed by the press. "Rooney has mastered the art of simple, unassuming declaration," William Howarth asserted in his Washington Post Book World review of the collection. Though Newsweek's Charles Leerhsen expressed a growing concern for what he calls Rooney's "intellectual laziness," Sue M. Halpern stated in the New York Times Book Review that "Mr. Rooney is not a trenchant analyst or a polished essayist, but to expect this of him is to fail to take his work on its own terms." Indeed, Rooney himself would be the first to agree. Asked by CA to comment on Don Hewitt's statement that Rooney is "to today's television what H. L. Mencken was to newspapering many years ago," Rooney replied: "I like it but it's not true." He added: "Mencken was an intellectual. I'm not."

Word for Word, published in 1986, garnered a similar range of responses. "Those who missed the first three [volumes of Rooney's collected essays] can just take a seat anywhere," a Time reviewer advised, adding that "Rooney is always good company." Decrying the insensitivity he suggests Rooney reveals in his columns on bag ladies and homosexuals, Patrick K. Lackey of the Washington Post nevertheless praised Rooney's "genius for annoyance." Those critics with the most negative reaction to Pieces of My Mind still suggest that it may well be the medium as much as the message that lessens his appeal. "Rooney comes across better on television than he does in his book," Alfred Rushton claimed in the Toronto Globe and Mail. "After all, it's hard to translate a raised eyebrow, a snarled decibel or the special effects of a speeded-up camera to the page."

In 1989 Rooney took his business from Putnam to another publishing house after a controversy over Putnam's publication of a book about life after death. According to Edwin McDowell's column for the New York Times, Rooney "became so irate that he attacked [Joel Martin and Patricia Romanowski's We Don't Die: George Anderson's Conversations with the Other Side] in his syndicated newspaper column as 'irresponsible trash.'" Thus, Rooney's fifth collection of essays, Not That You Asked Me . . . was published by Random House in 1989.

Soon afterwards, however, Rooney became embroiled in another controversy that resulted in his brief suspension from 60 Minutes and, temporarily at least, dampened public affection for him. Rooney was already under fire for a televised comment about homosexuals made in a 1989 year-end report when his comments in the Advocate, a magazine dedicated to speaking out for the homosexual community, were perceived as racist. Despite Rooney's denial of the offending remarks and his apology for the comment that had offended gay activists, CBS News president David Burke issued a three-month suspension of Rooney's 60 Minutes contract.

Rescinded after just three weeks, the suspension nevertheless remained a source of speculation. For some, it was a virtual admission of Rooney's guilt. For Walter Goodman of the New York Times, the suspension was a necessary appeasement of an angry public, whatever the case might actually have been: "By its treatment of Mr. Rooney, CBS is telling the whole nation, not just its black viewers, that television will make no slurs against any minority nor associate itself with anyone who might have made such a slur anywhere at any time, if the minority is of a size to cause it trouble." For still others, the suspension was an untimely mistake. "'There is a feeling that Burke should have at least stalled for time when the controversy broke,'" Los Angeles Times writer Jane Hall quoted an unidentified CBS employee as saying, "'[thus] allowing all sides to speak. . . . [Rooney] did not get his day in court.'"

Sincerely, Andy Rooney gathers together letters that Rooney has written to friends, family, enemies, television executives, and the general public over some fifty years. His usual acidic tone is present in what a Publishers Weekly reviewer described as "entertaining and witty, but also at times pontificating and arch" correspondence.

Common Nonsense is another collection of Rooney's brief essays, this time assembling some 150 of them on such topics as actor Jimmy Stewart, the beauty of old wooden barns, the lack of courtesy in modern life, the Catholic Church's pronouncements on sex, and the prevailing nature of advertising. Brad Hooper in Booklist described Rooney as being "more a humorous than an activist-type essayist, but we need all the humor we can get in this dysfunctional world." A critic for Publishers Weekly concluded: "His take on the annoyances and joys of humanity always hits home."

Rooney continues to bring his curmudgeonly brand of humorous commentary to one of America's most popular television shows. Speaking with Greta Van Susteren on her Fox News Channel television program On the Record, Rooney explained why he thought he was still such a popular television personality: "I'm very average, you know. I'm not a very special person. It's surprising how normal and everyday I am, and my reaction to things is normal. And I think people sense that. People come up to me on the street and say hello very easily as if—and I'm not a gracious, well-known person. I don't like it very much. . . . I would rather be an observer than to be observed. I'm not comfortable at all being on television. The money's good, but there isn't much else about it that I like."

For a complete interview with Rooney, see Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, Volume 9.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Rooney, Andrew A., A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1981.

Rooney, Andrew A., My War, Times Books (New York, NY), 1995.

PERIODICALS

Accent on Living, fall, 1992, "Rooney Forces Us to Think," p. 38.

American History, July, 1995, review of My War, p. 54.

America's Intelligence Wire, March 4-6, 2003, Greta Van Susteren, "Interview with CBS News' Andy Rooney."

Booklist, April 15, 1995, Denise Perry Donavin, review of My War, p. 1450; October 15, 2002, Brad Hooper, review of Common Nonsense, p. 362; November 15, 2003, David Pitt, review of Years of Minutes, p. 547.

Detroit Free Press, January 19, 1983.

Detroit News, November 8, 1981.

Forbes, March 25, 1996, p. 30.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), February 21, 1987.

Journalism History, summer, 2000, Michael D. Murray, review of Sincerely, Andy Rooney, p. 85.

Los Angeles Times, November 11, 1982; February 9, 1990; March 2, 1990.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, November 29, 1981; April 29, 1990, p. 14; May 20, 1990, p. 14.

Newsweek, December 6, 1982; October 15, 1984, p. 99.

New York, March 17, 1980.

New Yorker, October 21, 1944; February 16, 1946.

New York Times, October 29, 1944; February 17, 1946; May 25, 1947; March 22, 1989; February 13, 1990.

New York Times Book Review, December 19, 1982; October 7, 1984, p. 23, June 18, 1995, Tom Ferrell, review of My War, p. 20.

Publishers Weekly, April 17, 1995, review of My War, p. 45; November 29, 1999, review of Sincerely, Andy Rooney, p. 61; October 21, 2002, review of Common Nonsense, p. 62.

Rolling Stone, August 8, 1996, David Wild, "The Andy-Hero: In a Few Minutes, We Learn How Andy Rooney Has Survived 'Dateline,' Molly Ivins and Kurt Cobain," p. 65.

Saturday Review of Literature, February 23, 1946; July 26, 1947.

Television Quarterly, summer, 1996, Arthur Unger, "Andy Rooney of '60 Minutes': 'The Essence of Average?,'" p. 14.

Time, July 11, 1969; July 21, 1980; November 1, 1982; November 3, 1986.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), August 6, 1995, p. 3.

TV Guide, December 24, 1983.

Virginia Quarterly Review, spring, 1982.

Washington Post, November 8, 1982; January 5, 1987; February 8, 1990.

Washington Post Book World, December 20, 1981; October 14, 1984, p. 8; January 5, 1987; April 30, 1995, pp. 3, 12.

ONLINE

A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney Web site,http://www.cbsnews.com/ (April 28, 2003).*